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What makes an expensive speaker expensive

When one plunks down $10,000 $50,000 and more for a speaker you’re paying for awesome sound, perhaps an elegant or outlandish style, some prestige ... but what makes the price what it is?

Are the materials in a $95,000 set of speakers really that expensive? Or are you paying a designer who has determined he can make more by selling a few at a really high price as compared to a lot at a low price?

And at what point do you stop using price as a gauge to the quality? Would you be surprised to see $30,000 speakers "outperform" $150,000 speakers?

Too much time on my hands today I guess.
128x128jimspov
syntax's avatar
syntax
2,193 posts
 
ctsooner is spot on.


that’s the way it is.... :-)


Some folks don’t want to hear the truth.....

...... He laughed and said that the replacement costs of all the drivers in their 50k speaker wouldn’t cost the owner more than 1k to replace/repair. They have off the shelf tweeters that only use a slight mod and the other cones are poly and paper. Not the cheapest drivers, but not expensive and easy to get if you are a DIY’r. The cost is in the cabinets.
Modern High End is like a boutique store.... expensive bottle .... cheap fluid
ctsooner's avatar
ctsooner
2,480 posts
 
Syntax, the thing is that not all products have 'cheap fluid'.  I brought up Vandersteen because I am intimately familiar with the tech, R&D, product costs etc...  I also look at the points a manufacturer gets when selling wholesale.  I won't go into that part of things, but a few of the top lines don't have large margins and their products won't be carried because of this.  That's reality and not always carrying the best products.  Everyone needs to make money of course.  I just hate it when we are gouged for no good reason other than greed.  The market is what he market is and if you can fetch 100k or more for a speaker, then so be it. The market is there, but much of the time we will get as good or even better sound for much much less when we look at the other brand.  That's my reality.  I'll pay what I am able for what is fair.  That's why I got the Vandy Treo's and why now, I'm going to sell those and get the Quatro's.  For my money, the Quatro is the sweet spot in his line.  All the technology from the 7 mk2's has made it's way to the Quatro for only 14k.  That's a ton of money, no doubt, but when set up properly it's just sings.  Big room eq'd bass and the carbon driver just sounds correct.  It's also one of the few dynamic speakers I've heard that sounds like a point source.  That is so hard to achieve and most designers try to.  It's an expensive speaker to build no doubt.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,389 posts
 
Most people, myself included, don’t have rooms big enough to justify the most expensive home speakers which mostly tend to also be the largest.

If I did have an exceptionally large room that I could not cover for reasonable cost with home audio products I would look towards pro audio gear designed for larger venues for best chance at top notch sound for reasonable cost.

Of course if cost is no object then the world is your oyster....
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,598 posts
 

Cstooner, Wouldn’t some of the people who buy the big speakers also be the people who frequent the symphony and opera, maybe just to be seen there, but still there, listening? And wouldn’t these people at some point think to themselves, "My big speakers sound like crap, I’m going to trade them in on something else"?

Michael Fremer, who is probably one of the people most obsessed with sound quality in the world and who is very knowledgeable about it, owns some big Wilsons and even upgraded a few years back and stayed with Wilsons. His room, from what I read, is rather small and yet he gets sound that blows people’s socks off, again from what I read. What’s going on there? Could one element be that different people hear differently and therefore like different speakers?

I’m not saying that all expensive speakers are worth the money or that the more you spend the better the sound you get. In fact I’m sure you could spend $500,000 and end up with a system that sounds bad, but there must be something other than stupidity and deafness keeping the ultra high end speaker market alive..

martykl
3,578 posts
 
Tomcy6,

I can 100% guarantee that different people hear differently.  All you need to do is grab a few friends and run some pitch training software.  I've done it (part of a performance curriculum I took several years ago ) and you'll see fundamental differences in how different people perceive pitch and changes in pitch.

Different people also prioritize things differently, even if they're hearing the same thing.  Take two speakers that are similar, but not identical in mid-range accuracy.  The slightly more accurate speaker has less deep bass extension (or less clean max output or less high end extension, etc).  Two people that hear things identically may well have different preferences depending on what benefit they prioritize.

Unless you have a perfect speaker (and you don't) preferences will differ.
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